Mice smell, share each other's pain

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https://www.sciencenews.org/article/mice-smell-share-each-others-pain

   In this article, researchers found that mice could share pain with each other. This finding came out when researchers were poking the mice paws with a thin fiber. The mice going through withdraw showed this sensitivity, but the healthy mice sharing the same bedding with the withdraw mice showed the same sensitivity. Researchers found that  olfactory signals contributed to the sharing of pain; certain odors transmit pain information to other mice. Although olfactory senses contributed to this sharing, researchers also found that social transmission contributes to pain as well. These transmissions include; hearing squeals of pain and seeing the other mice going through pain. These signals influence pain perception to the healthy mice. Researchers think this could explain why some people experience pain from an injury longer than expected.

I found this article especially interesting after just learning about somato-sensory. We just learned in class how pain is felt, and the different kinds of pain. But what we learned is that the nerve endings contribute to feeling pain, so it makes question how scent signals induce pain. Do mice have different nerve endings than humans, that enlist pain? Or is it because mice have different sensitive regions. Maybe mice have more nerve endings in their paws and noses, because that's how they sense what it going on around them. If mice can share pain, can they share other states of mood? I think it would be interesting for more studies to research this concept.

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